Society is undergoing enormous disruption due to the continuous adoption of new digital technology and the forest industry is poised to take advantage of some of these. But successful replacement of longstanding and proven technology and forestry systems and meeting new information needs doesn’t happen by chance, and there is considerable risk to avoid failed implementations, waste of money and …
50% of deliveries to be made by drone
If you don’t think drone deliveries are going to take off (excuse the pun), think again. While the U.S. and Europe inch closer to drone delivery, China is racing ahead. China’s leading e-commerce company, JD, has launched an agressive trial that the company says will lead to 50% of its packages being delivered by drone. Xinhua.net reports that New Year’s …
Airobotics wins unique drone flight approval
Israeli drone provider Airobotics has secured the first-ever approval by Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority to operate drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) from a remote operations centre. In addition, the unique waiver allows the company to operate without the need of an air crew on site, making it the first such waiver issued by CASA. Remote pilots are …
Big data technologies driving the bioeconomy
Finnish pilot develops new solution for sustainable forestry Europe is feverishly looking for new ways to use farm, forest and fishery resources more responsibly and sustainably and to promote the production of the best possible raw materials in order to increase the availability of food, energy and biomaterials. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, the Finnish Forest Centre and …
Land Information NZ develops wilding tool
Land Information New Zealand develops tool to enable public to help fight spread of wilding conifers, which can threaten productive farmland, native ecosystems, tourism, economy; Wilding Watch can be used to find new infestations and upload photos. A new tool to enable the public to help fight one of New Zealand’s most invasive species has been created by Land Information …
Most Important Factors For a Successful Fixed-wing UAV Flight
What’s the single most important factor to help facilitate a successful fixed-wing UAV flight? It’s a question we get a lot from UAV (drone) operators across the world. And while it would be great to point to just one thing you could do to ensure every flight is a success, the reality is that there are many factors that contribute …
New satellite to be launched with IR capability
Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, has announced that it would be extending its Earth observation capabilities by acquiring Australia’s first CubeSat designed to detect invisible infrared light. To be known as CSIROSat-1, the new satellite will allow researchers from CSIRO and other institutions to ‘see’ features that can’t otherwise be seen using satellite imagery in the visible spectrum. Although the …
2019 Global Outlook for the Commercial Drone Industry
Hitting the ground running in 2019, dronelife.com started a timely conversation this year about the key trends in the commercial drone industry to focus on. As the industry consolidates the market will become a harsher environment as companies race for time and funding to successfully introduce their products. Meanwhile, a lot of new and massively funded companies will pop up having done …
New lidar scanner improves data collection
Scion, New Zealand’s CRI for forestry and wood products,has a new top-of-the line lidar scanner – the Riegl MiniVUX-1 UAV Snoopy V-series manufactured by LidarUSA. The new piece of equipment has higher resolution and accuracy than Scion’s current scanner, and has an increased range. Being able to capture data at greater than 60 m above ground (and up to 120 …
Voxel-based metrics proving accurate
Using voxel-based analysis of aerial lidar is a promising new development in remote sensing. In the past, high-density lidar has largely been restricted to terrestrial laser scanners. Now, high-density scanners are being mounted on helicopters and UAVs flying close to the tops of forests to provide very fine-scale imagery of trees. This kind of scanning generates very dense point clouds …